Page 29 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
She knelt in the flower beds with her sleeves rolled to the elbows and Ma’s leather gardening gloves on—the ones with the yellow stitching. The roses had gotten their second weeding since yesterday, and the dark soil around them looked turned and loose.
But the baby lay in the dirt about two feet from Grace, on her back on what looked like a folded piece of sacking, wearing the flour sack bonnet Mason had mentioned. She lay still in the way newborns did. Not asleep, just unsure how to move around in the world yet. Her fingers drifted open and closed against nothing. Her head had rolled to one side, and her lips moved faintly, rooting at the air and at the edge of her bonnet, where it touched her cheek.
On the porch, Pa sat in his chair.
His whittling knife rested in one hand, and a half-carved something or other rested in the other, but he’d stopped working. Just watched the two of them in the garden with an expression Logan hadn’t seen on the old man’s face in alongtime.
Then Pa’s gaze shifted and found Logan standing by the woodshed like some fool who’d forgotten how his own legs worked.
Pa tipped his chin toward Grace.
Logan crossed the yard.
Grace looked up as his shadow fell across the flower bed. A smudge of dirt ran along her jaw, and the sun caught the copper in her freckles, and the collar of her dress had gone crooked from the baby grabbing at it all day.
“You done with chores already?”
“Finished up in the stable.”
“Your brothers still breathin’?”
“Mostly.”
She smiled, and it spread slowly across her face, starting at one corner of her mouth and taking its time reaching the other. That rearranging in his chest happened again. It was more obvious now, more deliberate, like whatever piece of furniture had been moving around in that locked room had finally found its spot and settled.
“Well,” she nodded at the ground beside her. “You gonna stand there blockin’ my light or you gonna make yourself useful?”
He dropped to his knees next to her and picked up the hand trowel she’d set beside the watering can. The work came easy now after yesterday’s practice, turning the soil around the rose bases, breaking up the clumps, and pulling the small weeds that had already started creeping back in, because weeds up here grew like they had a personal vendetta against you.
Between them, the baby babbled at the soil and slapped both palms flat against it, sending up little puffs of dust that made her sneeze.
“She loves bein’ outside.” Grace leaned over and wiped the baby’s chin with her thumb. “Inside, she fusses. Out here, she’s happy as a clam at high tide.”
“She’s lucked into a good Ma, I reckon.”
The words just came out. Plain and easy, like breathing. He hadn’t meant to sayMa. He’d meant to say something neutral, something practical, something that kept things in the territory ofbusiness arrangementandno complications.
Grace went still for just a second. Then she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and cleared her throat.
“Here.” She reached over and scooped the baby up out of the dirt pile, bonnet and all, and plopped the baby into Logan’s lap. “Hold her facin’ out. Like she’s sittin’ in a chair.”
“I know how to—”
“You know how to hold her against your chest. That’s naptime hold. This here’s playtime hold. Different job, different grip.”
She repositioned his arms, so the baby sat upright in his lap with her back against his stomach, and then she pressed his hand flat against the baby’s belly. She had his other hand supporting the baby’s head.
“There. She can see the world from up here. And keep your hand firm on her middle so she’s got somethin’ to lean on. She can’t sit up proper on her own yet, but she wants to look around.”
The baby couldn’t see very far yet, but she stared at the colors and shapes around her—the rose bush, the porch, and a bird crossing the yard.
“Now.” Grace held out her index finger above the baby’s loosely curled hand. “Put your finger in her palm.”
He hesitated, then extended one finger and touched it gently to the baby’s open hand. The baby’s fingers closed around it immediately, all four of them, and the thumb, clamping down with a grip that seemed impossible for something so small.
Logan went still.
“She’s not going to break,” Grace said. “And she’s not letting go either. Try pulling your hand back.”
